Martin Biegelman
- Acclaimed fraud fighter, author, speaker, and consultant
- Retired federal agent with subject matter expertise in the detection, investigation and prevention of fraud and corruption
- Former Director of Financial Integrity at Microsoft Corporation
Travels From
Arizona
Martin Biegelman Speaker Biography
Martin Biegelman is Managing Director and Leader of the Investigations Practice at SunHawk Consulting, LLC, a risk, compliance, and investigations consulting firm. He is also the founder and Principal of Martin Biegelman Advisors LLC, also a risk, compliance, and investigations consulting firm. Martin brings decades of experience investigating and preventing fraud and corruption as well as the development of corporate compliance and anti-fraud programs while in leadership roles in law enforcement, consulting, and the corporate sector. His extensive experience includes Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and anti-bribery compliance, fraud and financial investigations, litigation consulting, investigative due diligence, conflicts of interest, whistle-blower retaliation and other employee and vendor misconduct, as well as corporate compliance assessment, design, and enhancement across industries. He has conducted and managed complex and high-risk investigations and engagements in more than 70 countries.
Prior to joining Deloitte, he worked at two international consulting firms where he served first as a Managing Director in the Global Investigations and Compliance Practice and then as Executive Vice President of the Anti-Bribery and Litigation Support Practices. In 2002, Martin founded and led Microsoft Corporation’s Financial Integrity Unit, a highly acclaimed global business conduct investigations and compliance program that continues to serve as a model for other companies. He led that program until 2011.
Martin is a former federal agent having served as a United States Postal Inspector in a variety of investigative and management assignments across the country. As a Postal Inspector and Team Leader, he conducted and supervised thousands of successful investigations of mail fraud, asset misappropriation, financial crimes, insurance and health care fraud, mortgage fraud, bankruptcy fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, investment and securities fraud, organized crime, money laundering, asset forfeiture, mail theft, corruption, kickbacks, bribery, RICO, False Claims Act and Qui Tam, and other federal crimes. As a federal agent, Martin spent many years working closely with the various banks and financial institutions that were victimized by bank fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, data breaches and other significant financial crimes. As a result of his reputation and expertise in this area, in 1986 Martin testified before the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on credit card fraud, identity theft and non-traditional organized crime.
Martin’s last law enforcement role was as the Inspector in Charge of the Phoenix Field Office where he led law enforcement operations for the Postal Inspection Service in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada. In that role, he managed multi-state teams of federal agents responsible for the investigation and prevention of a wide variety of federal crimes with a particular focus on fraud, corruption, and other financial crimes. Earlier in his career, he was a criminal investigator with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office where he investigated economic crime, official corruption and bribery. Martin was also the head of an internal affairs investigative unit for a New York State regulatory agency.
Martin is both a Certified Fraud Examiner (since 1995) and a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (since 2008). He is also a licensed Private Investigator in Arizona. He has authored six books on topics such as the FCPA, corporate compliance and ethics, fraud investigation and prevention, credit card fraud and identity theft, and is a frequent speaker on these and other subjects. Since 2007, he has been a faculty member for the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics’ Basic Compliance & Ethics Academies where he teaches sessions on conflicts of interest, bribery, corruption, and other compliance subjects. Since 2020, he has been a Faculty Associate/Adjunct Professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University where he teaches two courses, Conducting Fact Investigations and Fraud Examination.
Throughout his career, Martin has received numerous awards and recognition from United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, United States Postal Inspection Service, the International Association of Credit Card Investigators and other law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, anti-fraud groups, and professional organizations. In June 2022, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) bestowed on Martin their prestigious Hall of Fame Award, a lifetime achievement award. The ACFE Hall of Fame Award recognizes a distinguished fraud fighter who has taken the anti-fraud profession to a new level, whose work spans decades in the global fight against fraud and encapsulates the very definition of what it means to be an anti-fraud professional.
The Nature of Fraud: Lies, Greed, Arrogance, and The Potato Chip Theory of Fraud
Fraud is a relentless evil that continually targets businesses, consumers, and government, and results in financial, litigation, reputational, and emotional costs. In this presentation, a lifelong practitioner in fraud detection, investigation, and prevention will share his experience with fraud and fraudsters while in his various leadership roles in law enforcement, corporate and consulting. In this presentation, Martin Biegelman will explore the nature of fraud, some of the many types of fraud schemes and scams that plague businesses and individuals, and the associated lessons learned. He will discuss why people commit fraud, share his many theories about fraud, and why understanding the impact of fraud can help in fighting this crime and not becoming a victim.
When Rampant Organizational Fraud Occurs, the Question is Where Was the Board?
The importance of corporate governance and a resilient board of directors is not a new concept. It has long been held that effective board oversight can do much to reduce the risk of management misconduct. Unfortunately, that premise has not been universally embraced, and corporate fraud and other misconduct persist. A board that abdicates its corporate governance and oversight role will often miss the signs of pervasive organizational fraud and fail to act to protect the organization, investors, and employees from financial, litigation and reputational risk. The result is the often-asked question of Where Was the Board? In this presentation, Martin Biegelman will share examples of boards that failed to provide the required oversight and the broad impact of those failures. He will also discuss the role of an effective board in reducing organizational misconduct and provide best practices, critical questions that boards should ask, and other actions that boards can leverage for enhanced corporate governance and oversight.
Retaliation: The Insider Threat That Can Shatter an Organization and Its Culture
Retaliation, real or imagined, continues as one of the biggest concerns of employees. Study after study confirms this. The fear of retaliation hinders many employees from coming forward to report allegations. What makes retaliation such a problem is the innate way that people want to know the identity of the person who made an allegation against them or their company, and then retaliate. It bears repeating that retaliation can take many forms. In recent years we have seen a spike in whistleblower complaints alleging retaliation from those in positions of power. So, what more can organizations do to ensure the safety of their employees to report misconduct without the fear of retribution? In this presentation, Martin Biegelman will share his considerable experience investigating whistleblowers allegations and the often-resulting retaliation. He will explore the nature of retaliation, why it continues to be an insider threat for organizations, discuss case studies of conflicts of interest, and how culture, policies, procedures, and leading practice can best retaliation.
Faces of Fraud: Cases and Lessons from a Life Fighting Fraudsters
Fraud is an evil with a life of its own that shows no sign of lessening. The aura of fraud comes not from how a person looks but from their criminal intent and the resulting self-serving actions ruthlessness, and arrogance. Fraudsters are silver-tongued devils who will say and do anything with such convincing words and actions that victims, both corporations and individuals, can easily fall prey to their schemes and scams. Knowing the mindset of fraudsters along with the red flags of the many types of frauds can be of great value in detecting and preventing fraud in business organizations. This presentation will draw from Martin Biegelman’s half century experience investigating, detecting, and preventing fraud in law enforcement, consulting, and corporate roles. This presentation is based on the book of the same name by Martin Biegelman.
Conflicts of Interest: Why You Can’t Serve Two Masters
Conflicts of interest occur everywhere and in organizations whether public or private, large or small, foreign or domestic. By their very nature, they are some of the hardest organizational issues to detect, investigate, and prevent. They are usually secretive in nature and the financial benefit is often hidden. In their worst forms, bribes, kickbacks, fraud, and corruption place the involved individuals and their organizations in severe legal and reputational jeopardy. Conflicts of interest usually do not end well for those who have turned a blind eye to ethical business practices. The good news is that effective compliance programs can be very effective in responding to conflict issues both in stopping them from occurring and lessening their impact when they do occur. In this presentation, Martin Biegelman will draw from his considerable experience investigating conflicts of interest and teaching compliance professionals about this subjects in how to develop and maintain robust conflict of interest programs.
Theranos on Trial: Compliance, Ethics, and Culture Lessons from the Prosecution of Elizabeth Holmes
We can learn much from the failures of others. In the case of Silicon Valley startup Theranos, a privately held healthcare technology company that promised to change the world of medicine, there were a multitude of failures. Those failures covered a host of areas including ethics, compliance, and culture, resulting in a pervasive fraud. Overall, it’s a sad but fascinating case study. In this presentation, Martin Biegelman will discuss the indictment, trial and conviction of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Theranos, the massive fraud that led to Holmes’ indictment, the severely lacking corporate culture and leadership, the unheeded warnings for investors, and the many lessons learned from this debacle. He will examine how a culture of lies, fear, and retaliation contributed to the company’s downfall, the value of a speak-up culture, effective corporate compliance, and the importance of a fully engaged board of directors, and the many lessons that organizations can learn from this corporate failure.
